SCO Files Response To Demand For Evidence 498
The Welcome Rain writes "SCO has posted its notice of compliance with the court order of December 12, which required them to produce evidence. The document itself is brief, but refers to a sixty-page supplement which lists the offending lines, and asserts that it can find more when IBM produces some of the evidence demanded of them by SCO. Millions of lines on sixty pages? How silly."
hmmm (Score:-1, Informative)
Wait a minute (Score:5, Informative)
On a side note, any legal reason why they would say "exceed 60 pages". Why not 50 pages, or 70 pages, or whatever?
Re:supplement? (Score:1, Informative)
More info and analysis on GROKLAW (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like they won't meet the Judge's threshold (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, the full list of Interrogatories (Score:5, Informative)
INTERROGATORY NO. 1: seeks specific identification of all alleged trade secrets and confidential or proprietary information that SCO alleges IBM misappropriated or misused. This information is requested by product, file and line of code.
INTERROGATORY NO. 2: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 2 seeks further identification of: (a) all persons who have or had rights to the same; (b) the nature and sources of SCO's rights in the same; and (c) efforts to maintain secrecy or confidentiality of the same.
INTERROGATORY NO. 3: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 3 seeks the identity of all persons to whom the same was disclosed and the details of such disclosure. In particular, this interrogatory seeks: (a) the date of disclosure; (b) the terms of disclosure; (c) the documents relating to disclosure; (d) all places where the trade secret and/or confidential or proprietary information may be found or accessed.
INTERROGATORY NO. 4: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 4 seeks information regarding each instance in which plaintiff alleges that IBM misappropriated or misused the same. In particular, this interrogatory seeks (a) the date of the alleged misuse or misappropriation; (b) the persons involved; c) the manner of misuse or misappropriation; and (d) the location of any method or code in any IBM product, Linux, open source or the public domain.
INTERROGATORY NO. 5: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 5 seeks identification of (a) all agreements relating thereto, and (b) all copyrights and patents relating thereto, including but not limited to the owners, licensors, licensees, assignors or assignees thereof.
INTERROGATORY NO. 6: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 6 seeks (a) the origin of the code or method, including where, when and by whom created; (b) all products in which the code or method is included or upon which it is based (in whole or in part).
INTERROGATORY NO. 7: seeks a description of each instance in which IBM allegedly engaged in unfair competition, including but not limited to: (a) the dates of such conduct, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of unfair competition.
INTERROGATORY NO. 8: seeks the identification of all agreements with which IBM allegedly interfered, including but not limited to: (a) the date of interference, (b) the persons involved in the interference, (c) the manner of interference, (d) the actions (if any) IBM encouraged licensees to take, (e) the actions, if any, such licensees took as a result of IBM's inducement/encouragement, (f) the trade secret or proprietary information (if any) involved in the alleged interference.
INTERROGATORY NO. 9: seeks identification of all agreements that IBM has allegedly breached, including but not limited to: (a) the date of breach, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of breach.
INTERROGATORY NO. 10: Separately, for each of plaintiff's claims for relief, please identify all persons (including but not limited to present or former employees of plaintiff or plaintiff's predecessors in interest) with knowledge relating to plaintiff's claims and contentions and the general nature of, or the categories of, facts known by each person.
INTERROGATORY No.11: Please identify all products ever marketed, sold or distributed by plaintiff or plaintiff's pred
Re:hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure Darl and company also kick up a stink at the hardware store when the checkout boys won't assemble Darl's DIY storage rack.
Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:supplement? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty simple really.
They're using the largest round number possible (to impress) without looking silly or lying.
KFG
Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FYI, the full list of Interrogatories (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds like they won't meet the Judge's thresho (Score:2, Informative)
It's SCO that's using Small fonts, not IBM (Score:5, Informative)
The sixty pages referred to in the original story are pages that SCO has promised to deliver to IBM when they get around to it.
Now, of course, the small font claim is something we shouldn't dismiss too lightly. SCO did originally try to meet its discovery obligations by providing IBM with something like 100 million lines of code printed out on paper.
Re:Compression? (Score:3, Informative)
As an engineer, I need to look at the edge conditions. Consider the case where the recipient already has a copy of the source code. The compression / decompression algorithm could be smart enough to say "Yup, that's it" and have the entire payload be "1" or "Nope, here's a gzipped version" and have the payload be a "0" followed by a general purpose compression payload. There are points in between that make this compression be specifically tuned but slightly more useful, for example, each paragraph gets its own fingerprint to follow a "1" and non-SCO paragraphs get bzipped, or whatever. In any event, it is not impossible to compress millions of lines of text onto 60 pages for any reasonably arbitrary font size when the programmer has adequate knowledge of the application.
Not that SCO will let any trained programmers worth their weight in carbon dioxide to look at the application conditions, but it was fun to think about.
Re:supplement? (Score:3, Informative)
You'd better be quick then. It looks like the downward spiral has already started.
Some things to consider... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:hmmm (Score:1, Informative)
Stowell - No examples of copyrighted (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Are we going to learn our lessons, or what? (Score:3, Informative)
So, if he/she submits code that he/she does not have rights to, it is they who are liable, not the entire project.
This could be contrasted against a newspaper or magazine, where the contributing writers do not retain their copyright. That's why the newspaper is liable if a story turns out to be plagiarized.
(Note that in both cases, end users/subscribers are not liable, unlike what SCO seems to think)
Some OSS projects, like GNU and Apache, require you to sign over copyrights, like with newspapers, this makes them liable.
But at the same time, copyright releases usually entail that you agree that your work is original, thus giving them the ability to seek damages against you if you weren't truthful.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
But in this particular case the 'discovery' is not really discovery as such but the defendant forcing the plaintif to actually reveal their true statement of claim in a form that makes it possible to actually mount a defense.
Courts tend to consider that type of issue rather more skeptically. You can dick arround making the other side perform makework for only so long before the court tells you to stop with the games and to start behaving in a manner that will allow the case to be set down for trial.
Re:Question (Score:1, Informative)
Well, at least the first hour covers the applicationm fee.
From http://www.azbar.org/AttorneyResources/pro_hac.cfm :
Applicants must pay a fee of $369.75 to apply for pro hac vice admission during the 2004 calendar year. Because the fee is computed at 85% of the fee assessed members of the State Bar of Arizona, the fee will increase as fees increase for members of the State Bar.
Re:Files and line numbers may be sufficient (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but SCO was ordered to do more than specify lines of code. They were ordered to provide a huge pile of information for each and every alleged infraction. We may not have access to SCO's response, but we do have access to the questions that they were supposed to answer. Take a look at interrogatories 12 and 13, for example:
That is a lot of information to provide for "each line of code." I would bet that in many cases 60 pages wouldn't even be enough to correctly document one infraction. And there are 11 other interrogatories that deal with entirely different aspects of the case. Each of these interrogatories likewise required huge amounts of information to correctly answer their demands. Handing over 60 pages is like submitting a Hello World program written in bash when asked to code an ERP program. It's so ridiculous that you almost have to invent a new word to correctly describe it.
The funniest part of the whole thing is that SCO apparently has paid their lawyers millions of dollars for their supposed "legal advice."
Re:supplement? (Score:2, Informative)
But JFS2 was not implemented on AIX first... (Score:2, Informative)
JFS2 wa first written for OS/2, and then was ported to AIX and Linux using the OS/2 code as reference.
So that makes SCO's argument that it is a UNIX derivived code pretty much moot.
And I think IBM followed a similar path woth RCU...
Re:Files and line numbers may be sufficient (Score:3, Informative)
The order was to provide:
1) all alleged trade secrets and confidential or proprietary information that SCO alleges IBM misappropriated or misused by product, file and line of code.
2) For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in 1: (a) all persons who have or had rights to the same; (b) the nature and sources of SCO's rights in the same; and (c) efforts to maintain secrecy or confidentiality of the same.
3) the identity of all persons to whom the [Confidential Information] was disclosed and the details of such disclosure. In particular: (a) the date of disclosure; (b) the terms of disclosure; (c) the documents relating to disclosure; (d) all places where the trade secret and/or confidential or proprietary information may be found or accessed.
4) [I]nformation regarding each instance in which plaintiff alleges that IBM misappropriated or misused the [Confidential Information]. In particular: (a) the date of the alleged misuse or misappropriation; (b) the persons involved; c) the manner of misuse or misappropriation; and (d) the location of any method or code in any IBM product, Linux, open source or the public domain. (emphasis added)
5) identification of (a) all agreements relating to [IBMs alleged infringement], and (b) all copyrights and patents relating thereto, including but not limited to the owners, licensors, licensees, assignors or assignees thereof.
6) [For each item SCO alledges was misappropriated]:(a) the origin of the code or method, including where, when and by whom created; (b) all products in which the code or method is included or upon which it is based (in whole or in part).
7) [A] description of each instance in which IBM allegedly engaged in unfair competition, including but not limited to: (a) the dates of such conduct, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of unfair competition.
8) [I]dentification of all agreements with which IBM allegedly interfered, including but not limited to: (a) the date of interference, (b) the persons involved in the interference, (c) the manner of interference, (d) the actions (if any) IBM encouraged licensees to take, (e) the actions, if any, such licensees took as a result of IBM's inducement/encouragement, (f) the trade secret or proprietary information (if any) involved in the alleged interference.
9) [I]dentification of all agreements that IBM has allegedly breached, including but not limited to: (a) the date of breach, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of breach.
12) [I]dentify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX. (emphasis added)
13) For each line of code and other materials identified in response to 12, please state whether (a) IBM has infringed plaintiff's rights, and for any rights IBM is alleged to have infringed, describe in detail how IBM is alleged to have infringed plaintiff's rights; and (b) whether plaintiff has ever distributed code or other material or otherwise made it available to the public, as part of a Linux distribution or otherwise, and, if so, the circumstances under which it was distributed or otherwise made available, including but not limited to the product(s) in which it was distributed or made available, and the terms under which is was distributed or made available (such as under the GPL or any other license).
A response to any one of these requests should take more than 60 pages - 60 pages for ALL responses is totally out of touch with reality.
I agree that we have to wait until the judge and IBM have read the submission to know how *they* react, but it should be pla
Your sig is wrong. (Score:1, Informative)
"So listen up bitch 'cause there may be a test, my style is smooth but it's hard to digest."
Re:supplement? (Score:3, Informative)
Ah yes, Grocklaw has it and some explanations of how it might be fought. But until it is broken it is unlikely that we will get access to the actual evidence.
I was under the impression, thanks to a Groklaw article, that you can't claim both copyright/patent AND trade secret. You use copyrights and patents to guarantee that nobody is allowed to duplicate your work because you are distributing said work in a very non-discriminating manner. (Giving it to anyone who will pay, basically) Filing a patent on something puts documentation on how it works in the public domain. For trade secret protection, you can't disitribute it unless you are discriminating about who you distribute it to. You also don't get the guarantee that nobody can duplicate your work. For example, the recipe for Coke is a trade secret, and anyone is allowed to buy a can reverse engineer it, and mass-produce the same thing for profit. The Coca-cola company doesn't distribute the recipe to anyone.
The Groklaw piece [groklaw.net] I read talked about the USL v BSD trial, and how USL tried to claim trade secret at one point, but were unable to prove they had distributed the code in a discriminating fashion. It also came out that since the code had been disitributed so long ago, it wasn't even copyrightable, which is a large reason why USL and BSD settled the case.